EPA carbon crackdown set to launch

The EPA will launch the most dramatic anti-pollution regulation in a generation early next month, a sweeping crackdown on carbon that offers President Barack Obama his last real shot at a legacy on climate change — while causing significant political peril for red-state Democrats.

The move could produce a dramatic makeover of the power industry, shifting it away from coal-burning plants toward natural gas, solar and wind. While this is the big move environmentalists have been yearning for, it also has major political implications in November for a president already under fire for what the GOP is branding a job-killing “war on coal” and promises to be an election issue in energy-producing states such as West Virginia, Kentucky and Louisiana.

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The Environmental Protection Agency’s proposed rule is aimed at scaling back carbon emissions from existing power plants, the nation’s largest source of greenhouse gases. It’s scheduled for a public rollout June 2, after months of efforts by the administration to publicize the mounting scientific evidence that rising seas, melting glaciers and worsening storms pose a danger to human society.

“This rule is the most significant climate action this administration will take,” said Kyle Aarons at the Center for Climate and Energy Solutions, one of a host of groups awaiting the rule’s release. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) has urged the EPA to “go ahead boldly” with the rule, saying the agency must step in where Congress has refused to act.

But for coal country, the rule is yet another indignity for an industry already facing a wave of power plant shutdowns amid hostile market forces and a series of separate EPA air regulations. Coal-state Democrats like West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin have joined the criticism, echoing industry warnings that the fossil fuel was crucial to keeping the lights on in much of the U.S. during this past brutal winter.

“You have another polar vortex next year, how many people will lose their lives?” Manchin asked at a POLITICO energy policy forum Tuesday.

Other red-state Democrats, like Alison Lundergan Grimes, who is challenging Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell in Kentucky’s Senate race, have disavowed Obama’s EPA proposals — she denounced an earlier agency power plant rule as an “out-of-touch Washington regulation.” West Virginia Rep. Nick Rahall, one of the most vulnerable Democrats in November, complained last year that “this callous, ideologically driven agency continues to be numb to the economic pain that their reckless regulations cause.” And Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.), a top Republican target this year, has voted with Republicans to hobble the agency’s rules.

But supporters say that whatever the political dynamics, the need for acting on climate change is dire.

Next month’s debut comes after a series of scientific reports warning about the rising seas, worsening storms and other havoc that global warming will bring to people around the world, including effects that have already started to appear in the U.S. The White House has spent months in a steady effort to call attention to those findings, as part of an outreach that included having Obama give one-on-one interviews with television meteorologists this month.

“This is a problem that is affecting Americans right now, whether it means increased flooding, greater vulnerability to drought, more severe wildfires,” Obama told one of the forecasters. “And people’s lives are at risk.”

‘We can’t sit by silently’

It’s not just the coal industry that’s losing sleep over the rule. Manufacturers and industries like oil refining have been eyeing the power plant regulations as the starting gun for a process that will eventually lead to greenhouse gas limits for a wide variety of businesses.

“These regulations could reduce the diversity of our energy supply, increase electricity and compliance costs for American businesses and shrink our competitiveness,” said Ross Eisenberg, vice president for energy and resources policy at the National Association of Manufacturers. “We can’t sit by silently while that happens.”

Despite opponents’ warnings that the rule will be a death sentence for coal-fired power, EPA leaders have been adamant that they’ll offer states ample “flexibility” to devise their own ways to cut carbon. Some states may join regional cap-and-trade networks, similar to an existing Northeastern compact that has co-existed with coal plants for years. Others could push for investments in wind and solar power, or in energy efficiency programs that help homeowners and businesses reduce their demand for electricity.

The rule, set to become final in mid-2015, would apply to the nation’s thousands of coal and natural gas-fired power plants. But coal — the cheapest, dirtiest and most abundant fossil fuel — would bear the heaviest burden.

That means its impact could be greatest in states like Kentucky, a major coal producer that gets as much as 90 percent of its power from the fuel — and which as recently as 2010 had the country’s lowest electricity prices. It’s also a crucial state in the 2014 Senate electoral calendar.

Republicans have said they also intend to use Obama’s climate policies as a wedge in states such as Alaska, Louisiana, Michigan, North Carolina and Iowa — all places where the GOP has a chance to pick up a Senate seat now held by Democrats.